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Get Ready for Your Digital Model

Algorithms will build data-driven alter egos for us that can do job interviews, shop for cars and go on dates

By

Pedro Domingos

Nov. 12, 2015 1:04 p.m. ET

Entrusting your money to a bank once seemed strange and risky. Similarly, entrusting all of your data to a company and letting its algorithms build a detailed model of you from it might seem to be an odd or even dangerous idea, but we’ll all soon take it for granted.

A decade from now, your personal model will be more indispensable than your smartphone, and the company that provides it may well be the world’s first trillion-dollar business. So it is time to start getting acquainted with our digital alter egos—and what they’ll...